Trump and TV: why we’re still amusing ourselves to death

Politicians must know cosmetics over ideology, wrote Neil Postman three decades ago. Those words ring true today.

Marketing experts have calculated that a politician with a background in TV, like U.S. President Donald Trump, has a head start of many millions of dollars over a lesser-known opponent, simply by virtue of his or her name recognition, writes Andrew Caddell. Photograph courtesy of Gage Skidmore

Opinion

BY ANDREW CADDELL

December 13, 2017

The late Neil Postman, who was arguably the intellectual heir of Marshall McLuhan, was one of the most articulate critics of television. In his 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman wrote of the decline in the American thirst for knowledge and the written word, and laid it at the ...

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